Teachers Will Picket Today in Orange : In Santa Ana, Others Will Vote on Pact Some Call Deceiving

The 1,100 teachers in Orange Unified School District are scheduled to picket their classrooms today in what will be the first school strike in Orange County since October, 1985.

The one-day strike is intended to underscore teacher unhappiness over the lack of a pay-raise settlement for the current school year, union officials said.

In the adjoining Santa Ana Unified School District, another pivotal labor action today will affect 1,750 more teachers.

They will vote this afternoon at Valley High School whether to accept or reject a proposed new contract. Scores of teachers have called for rejection of the proposal, largely because many teachers feel they were “deceived” in initial announcements of the settlement.

If the Santa Ana teachers reject their proposed contract, they also might simultaneously call for a strike. They authorized a strike on March 22 but set no date for a walkout.

Students Must Attend

In Orange Unified, the teachers scheduled their strike for today after failing to win the 3.15% pay raise they demanded for this year. The school district’s last offer was for 2.54%--the same amount of increase to the schools as provided in the state budget this fiscal year.

Orange Unified officials said Monday that they have adequate substitute teachers and that all classes will be open today. “Students are required to attend on Tuesday, and those who do not attend, without an excuse, will be truant,” said Josie Cabiglio, public information officer for the district.

Mark Rona, president of the teachers’ union, the Orange Unified Education Assn., predicted Monday that few regular teachers in the district will be in classrooms today. “We’re expecting 80% of our teachers on the picket lines on Tuesday,” Rona said.

Orange Unified’s school board has authorized paying $175 a day to substitute teachers during the strike and any other labor actions. Normal pay is $68 a day for substitutes in the district, Cabiglio said. “Some people have questioned how the district can afford to pay that much. The answer is that teachers on strike will be docked. They won’t be paid while they’re on strike. And the average teacher’s pay is more than what we’ll be paying substitute teachers. So it’s not as if we have extra money. We’re just using the money that would normally go to our regular teachers.”

Santa Ana Unified’s school board similarly voted last month to raise its substitute teacher pay from a normal daily rate of $50-$70 to $175 a day during teacher labor actions. There have been no official walkouts in Santa Ana Unified, but teachers in March staged two massive “sickouts” that were not authorized by their union.

The Santa Ana teachers and their union, the Santa Ana Educators Assn., have had somewhat of a falling out in recent days because of the way a notice of the proposed contract settlement was worded. The notice, put in teachers’ mailboxes on Friday, said the proposed pay raise was 5% for the current school year and 7% for the next school year, 1988-89. The mailer did not specify that the 5% for this school year is a one-time-only bonus and not a pay raise that remains part of a base salary.

Bill Ribblett, executive director of the Santa Ana Educators Assn., and Santa Ana Unified Assistant Supt. Don Champlin have said that leaving out an explanation of the 5% bonus was an inadvertent oversight. Some teachers, however, have called it a “deception” and urged defeat of the proposed settlement today.

According to Santa Ana Unified district officials, teacher’s pay currently averages $31,800 and ranges from $20,670 for beginning teachers to $41,383 for the most senior instructors. In Orange Unified, district officials said the average teacher’s pay is $33,307, and pay ranges from $21,686 to $40,628.

The last school strike in Orange County was a six-day walkout of the 410 teachers in Tustin Unified School District in October, 1985. That strike also centered on a dispute about higher pay for the teachers.